Three in four English hospitals failing to hit two cancer targets in league tables

An NHS hospital ward. ‘Delays in diagnosis and treatment cost lives – it’s as stark as that,’ one cancer charity boss said. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Three in four NHS hospital trusts are failing cancer patients, according to the first league tables of their kind, prompting experts to declare a “national emergency”.

Labour published the first league tables to rank hospitals in England since the early 2000s this week. The overall rankings score trusts based on a range of measures including finances and patient safety, as well as how they are bringing down waiting times for operations and in A&E, and improving ambulance response times.